Time flows through
me, in a hotel room high
above Chaoyang. I have come
to Beijing to do my small part
in
the
accelerating
enrichment of the elite
of China, and of those other
nations that own
and are owned in turn
by parts of it.

Time flowed through
me in the eternal, unchanging summer
afternoons of childhood,
just the same. Misdirecting
mitosis; strengthening and building
the striated muscle
that allows
me to do; bringing to seed,
bloom
and fruition
the brain
that allows me to be.

I didn't know, then, that the vibrating
rush
of the unfolding was
wearing on me.

Or, maybe I did.
I curse Frost for
warning me that the memory fools. Does this monkey tell
himself lies
about
the past, to make the narrative
more pleasing? The flow
of events more
satisfying?
Serendipitous?

I cetainly feel in this moment,
and in many others recent, a helplessness in the
apprehension
of inevitability.
Whatever
I choose, the world
will continue to be. However full
my accomplishments, however
tragic,
comic,
pathetic my failures,
I am one small dog.

What minute change
in the stream--whatever

chaotic,
dynamical
perturbation
I can
create--it seems

I can not predict.

And I have watched
others, women
and men that I admire,
whose poise
direction
serenity I seek
after, err
in recollection
of their own days and concerns.

There was a terror in seeing it.

But as the time
slides through me, its bulk
filling the channel of
my being as water
fills
a sluice
through a dam,
each drop that passes
by
is gone.

So much water was before
me once, and now so much
is
gone
behind.

And it is all full.
Each moment pregnant
with possibility,
a tree laden
with fruit
to pick,

to crush

between

my

teeth,

to feel slide
cool and wet into my
throat on the way to becoming me.